product

STEP 1 (Spreadsheet Tracking)

1. Create a spreadsheet (I use Google Spreadsheet) to track the people you will approach to review your product.

2. Highlight a row based upon significant events occurring in your process.  For example, highlight a row yellow when you send your product and green when the review gets posted.

STEP 2 (Find reviewers)

1. Go to the Amazon page for your product or author name (for example, I would go to the Mike Michalowicz author page).

2. Scroll to “Customers Also Bought Items By”

3. Click on an author (e.g. MJ DeMarco), follow Step 3 below and then repeat process for next author.

STEP 3 (Find reviewers)

1. When on a new author page, scroll to “Books by AuthorName”

2. For each distinct book, click on XXX customer reviews to see the reviews.

3. Sort customer reviews by “Newest First”

STEP 4 (Find reviewers)

1. Go to each review and click on the “by” name link.

2. Locate the reviewers details and determine (if possible) way to contact person.  This profile will sometimes include the persons email address, or social media contact info.

STEP 5 (Find reviewers)

1. If no contact info is readily available, try to determine persons contact info by using available info, such as  “Real Name” and location or other criteria.

2. HINT: Many book reviewers also have blogs or another form of websites, so once you find their website you will likely find a wealth of contact information.

3. Enter data into your reivewer spreadsheet, including name, date, contact info.

STEP 6 (Find reviewers)

1. Send an email to contact (copy and paste the email content in the box to the right of this instruction if you like. Just note that my name, Mike Michalowicz, is referenced – an I suspect you will want to change that.).

2. Use “Amazon review question” as the subject line.
3. Update data in the spreadsheet to reflect the send date of the email.

STEP 7 (Repeat process)

1. Repeat Step 3 through 6 until all reviewers for an author have been analyzed and contacted when possible.

2. Then do for the next Author in the list.

3. Use this method to contact approximately 25 “cold” individuals per week.  You can do more too if you wish, but I found that 25 is a week results in about 5 to 10 reviews a week (once things get flowing).

STEP 8

1. In your mail system, sort out responses by doing a search for “amazon review question”
Note: Occasionally people responding will change the subject line, so this is method does not always identify all responses, but seems to get about 95% of them.

2. Put a flag (I use a blue star) next to each response where the person is looking to get a copy of the book for review.
Note: As standard practice, we always use a blue star next to an email that requires us to send a book.  The blue star is not used for any other purpose.

3. Update the”Contact Responded” date in the spreadsheet with the date the response email comes back

STEP 9

1. Confirm you have received the mailing address for the individual. If not, send a response email asking to get their mailing address.

2. Enter the contact’s full mailing information into your spreadsheet.

3. Highlight the contacts row in yellow. (or whatever color you use to identify you are shipping the book/product.

4. Create a shipping label in USPS or other carrier.

STEP 10

1. Prepare shipment.  The picture to the right is how we pack our books.

2. Include a personalized thank you letter.
3. Also note that I also believe in delivering more then expected, so even though I promised one book to the reviewer I often put in both as a surprise.

STEP 11

1. Reply to the reviewers email. Copy and paste the email to the box in the right (you will want to tweak this email for the bold variables).

2.Update your spreadsheet!

STEP 12

1. Once the contact information is fully updated, delete the email from that reviewer from the inbox.

STEP 14

1. Send email (use template to right in the box) to recipient, with the subject line “Amazon review follow up”

2. Change NAME to the name of the recipient and remove the highlighting.

STEP 15

1. Change the Send Now to today’s date.

2. The colored section will automatically return to the yellow highlighted color.

STEP 16

1. Once the Amazon review goes live (check your review page daily and check for emails from reviewers saying they posted it), send the thank you email to the righ.